{"id":279,"date":"2007-06-14T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-15T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=279"},"modified":"2007-06-14T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-15T02:48:00","slug":"the-black-swans-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"The Black Swan&#8217;s End"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finished Taleb&#8217;s <em>The Black Swan<\/em> yesterday.  Certainly one of the best nonfiction books I have read in a long time, I highly recommend it to everyone  (though I can think of some people who would probably want to burn it).  I must admit I became a bit lost in some of the more technical parts, but this is one of those rare books which I&#8217;d love to read again sometime.  (The only book I&#8217;ve actually ever reread is Ayn Rand&#8217;s <em>The Art of Fiction<\/em>.  I&#8217;ve been meaning to reread <em>Godel, Escher, Bach<\/em> again for some time, but never made myself find time for it.)<\/p>\n<p>I was introduced to Taleb&#8217;s work through <a href=\"http:\/\/grumpyoldbookman.blogspot.com\/\">Michael Allen&#8217;s blog<\/a>.  He wrote a book (which is available as a free PDF download) called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsfieldpublications.co.uk\/rats.html\"><em>On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile<\/em><\/a>, which I also highly recommend (at least for writers).  I was quite happy to see Allen&#8217;s book referenced in <em>The Black Swan<\/em>.  (I also recommend Allen&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kingsfieldpublications.co.uk\/truth.html\"><em>The Truth About Writing<\/em><\/a>, also available as a free PDF download.)<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to Taleb (and Allen) for the great books!<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, I do have some quotes from <em>The Black Swan<\/em> that I&#8217;d like to add to the book quotes blog eventually.  (I&#8217;m really lazy about all my other blogs.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished Taleb&#8217;s The Black Swan yesterday. Certainly one of the best nonfiction books I have read in a long time, I highly recommend it to everyone (though I can think of some people who would probably want to burn it). I must admit I became a bit lost in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-4v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}